In November Socialist Party members Lois Austin and Hannah Sell appeared before the SpyCops inquiry. In answering the Met Police ‘justifications’ for their undercover policing, important issues about how to fight the far-right were contested. HANNAH SELL writes.
In 2015 the then Tory home secretary, Theresa May, set up the Undercover Policing Inquiry, known as the SpyCops Inquiry, to investigate the activities of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad, which ran from 1968 to 2008 and which had sent undercover officers into around 1,000 different organisations, all but a handful of them on the left. It took almost six years before the Inquiry began, and four years later it is still rumbling on.
Clearly its eventual conclusion will condemn some of the worst ‘excesses’ of the undercover officers. These include that a number of them had sexual relationships, including fathering children, while they were undercover, and that officers spied on the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence and other bereaved families.
There is no prospect whatsoever, however, that the result will be an end to the capitalist state being prepared to spy on any organisation which it considers a threat to its rule. The Special Demonstration Squad was only one of the ways in which it has been proven that supporters of Militant, the predecessor of the Socialist Party, were spied on in the past. For example, I submitted to the Inquiry documents from the National Archives from 1982 to 1989 belonging to the ‘Subversion in Public Life Group’, which worked under the direction of Tory prime minister Margeret Thatcher’s Cabinet Office and was closely linked to MI5 and Special Branch. It reported on the activities of trade unionists, particularly Militant supporters.
Similar actions by the state are inevitable today and in the future. In 2024 the then Tory government passed legislation, with no opposition from the Labour frontbench, which authorised state agencies to “participate in criminal conduct where the conduct is necessary and proportionate” for purposes including defending” the economic well-being of the United Kingdom”. What does this mean other than the ‘wellbeing’ of employers facing their workforce going on strike or, more broadly, growing support for socialist ideas that threaten the ‘economic wellbeing of the UK’?
YRE lessons for today
But while the Inquiry is not going to do anything to alter the character of the capitalist state and its defence of the existing order, the evidence given by Lois Austin and myself, then Chair and Secretary of Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE) in Britain, about the campaigns it led against the neo-Nazi British National Party (BNP) in the early 1990s, are rich in lessons for the struggles we are facing today. For that reason we are publishing extracts here of our individual written and verbal submissions, plus our statement on behalf of YRE. Our full submissions can be found at ucpi.org.uk.
YRE was launched in 1992 by supporters of Militant Labour (now the Socialist Party) and our co-thinkers in the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), with a 40,000 strong pan-European demonstration in Brussels. In Britain YRE grew into a sizeable democratic youth organisation which at its height “had around 50 local branches operating across Britain”. YRE campaigned on a wide variety of issues. Our central slogan was ‘for jobs and homes not racism’.
Our two largest campaigns were against the British National Party (BNP) in the London boroughs of Welling and Tower Hamlets. At the end of the 1990s the BNP, in an attempt to make electoral gains, moved away from their previous open support for fascism. At the start of the decade, however, they were openly Nazi. In 1992 they founded Combat 18 (with the 18 representing Hitler’s initials). It was a group of violent thugs who carried out attacks on minorities and the left. They published a ‘Red Watch’ list entitled ‘Kill ‘em all’.
Our campaigns centred on Welling, where the BNP had established their national headquarters in 1987, and in Tower Hamlets, where they had a councillor – the first fascist councillor since the second world war – on the Isle of Dogs from September 1993 to May 1994. In both boroughs the YRE and Militant Labour were key to pushing back and marginalising the BNP.
As Lois explained to the Inquiry (see box) our success was as a result of our ability to mobilise large numbers of workers and young people, above all in the communities affected, around a clear programme for workers’ unity. In doing so, however, we faced violence from both neo-Nazi thugs and from the police. It was therefore vital that we took a serious approach to stewarding.
Inevitably the Metropolitan Police are trying to use this to justify their infiltration of YRE and Militant Labour, and therefore much of our testimony concentrated on that issue. However, the conclusions we drew in the early 1990s still apply today. It is urgent that the trade union movement takes a serious approach to both mobilising against the far-right and racist division, and to the stewarding of anti-racist protests. Relying on the police for protection from the far-right is a serious mistake, and while far-right and fascist grouplets remain small and splintered at this stage, the drum beat of anti-migrant prejudice that has been whipped up by first the Tories and now the New Labour government, and is amplified by Reform, is starting to give racist thugs more confidence to raise their heads.
Today it is also pressing that the working class begins to build its own political party. The backdrop to the election of Derek Beackon on the Isle of Dogs was accumulated anger at a long history of the Labour council presiding over worsening social conditions, until they lost control to the Liberals in 1986. The Liberals did nothing to improve residents’ conditions, while whipping up racism to disguise the fact. Nationally at that stage Labour was moving to the right. Its leadership had condemned the mass movement of non-payment we led against the poll tax, and Labour councils had imprisoned non-payers. It was no surprise that in the 1992 general election it won only 11.5 million votes, compared to the 18 million people who had refused to pay the poll tax.
Nonetheless, many voters in Tower Hamlets horrified by the growth of the BNP still turned to Labour, leading to the biggest swing to Labour anywhere in the country in the 1994 local elections. Today’s capitalist New Labour, however, is hated – on only 16% in opinion polls. Even before the general election some, particularly Muslim workers, have broken with Labour to vote for various left candidates in opposition to Labour’s support for the Israeli state’s onslaught on Gaza. In Tower Hamlets Aspire, which currently leads the council, are part of this process. Nationally, however, the right populists of Reform are being picked up by a section of the working class as a means to protest against New Labour. Cutting across this requires building a party that fights in the interests of every section of the working class.
Welling stewarding debate
We were asked by the Inquiry about the stewarding of two major demonstrations that YRE organised in Welling to demand the closure of the BNP HQ. Of the first, on 8 May 1993, a little over two weeks after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, Lois explained the role of the police.
“You say there was ‘disorder’. The disorder on that demonstration was minor. A few of the sticks from the placards were thrown at the BNP headquarters and we weren’t surprised by that. People were very angry. But the disorder on that demonstration on 8 May was caused by the police”.
“Because we had stewards on the march, as did Panther, the black socialist organisation. We had stewards at the front of the march, at the back and at the sides. So the question needs to be asked of the Metropolitan Police: why did they decide that it was a good idea to wade in with horses and riot police with truncheons into the back of the demonstration, into the front of the demonstration, and then to split the demonstration into two, and run amok among the protesters, whacking people on the top of heads with their truncheons and their riot shields?”
“I would go as far as to say that it was a police riot on 8 May”.
Five months later a second Welling demonstration took place on 16 October 1993. This one was 50,000-strong. Titled as a ‘Unity’ demonstration it was co-organised by YRE, the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) – led by the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) – and the Indian Workers Association. Unfortunately, the Anti Racist Alliance (ARA) marched separately in central London on a much smaller demonstration, around 5,000 strong. This was despite the attempts of the YRE to try and bring all the anti-racist organisations together on one demonstration, including proposing to move the date in order to facilitate ARA holding their own central London demo and participating in the Welling mega-march.
As Lois explained, YRE took part in successive meetings before the demonstration “at Scotland Yard, trying to negotiate with the police the route that we wanted. We argued that it was a democratic right to march past the BNP headquarters”. Instead, four days before the demonstration, the police put an ‘exclusion order’ around the area of the BNP headquarters. The demo organisers were informed by the police that the demonstration would instead have to turn up Lodge Hill.
Lois was chief steward for YRE, marching at the front under the Unity banner, and explained to the Inquiry how the organisers had agreed that the demo would get to the point where it was due to turn onto Lodge Hill “and attempt to negotiate with the police again the route that we wanted”. Had that failed the intention was to march up Lodge Hill as the police had proposed. However, as Lois described, the police had “lines of riot police blocking Lodge Hill with police horses”, along with every other possible route.They then proceeded to launch an all-out attack on the demonstration with riot police and horses.
Julie Waterson, the chief steward for the ANL, was badly hurt by a baton across the head. Lois described to the Inquiry how the police twice tried to baton her and she was only protected by YRE stewards jumping on top of her. The crush caused by the police attacking the front of a 50,000-strong demonstration led to people fainting, and to the collapse of a churchyard wall. The danger of a Hillsborough-type disaster as a result of police violence was clear. Lois and other stewards continued to demand of the police that Lodge Hill was opened. When that eventually happened YRE stewards were able to keep the demonstration together and march up Lodge Hill, although the back of the demonstration was still under police attack.
In my evidence I was challenged about the joint stewards meeting that took place the night before the march. I explained that debates had taken place there between YRE and the ANL. However, “these were not about whether the march should be peaceful, we all wanted that, but about the best way to achieve that. The ANL argued for a symbolic sit down at the point where the demonstration would be closest to the BNP HQ. We thought that was a bit naive”. I went on to explain that in our view when the Chief of the Met Police “Paul Condon is on the news saying all police leave has been cancelled and violence is expected on the demonstration, which we knew was not the case, then you have to expect police violence”. The YRE stewarding, which involved stewards linking arms around the demonstration, and stewards at the front wearing hard hats as protection against police batons, was derided by SWP members in the stewards meeting as ‘Dad’s Army’. On the day ANL members initially sat down, even though it was clear we were in a police trap with all routes blocked. Once the attack began, however, many ANL members joined with YRE stewards in working to link arms and protect the demonstration. Only the stewarding prevented far worse injuries, or even deaths.
Despite the police’s best efforts the 16 October demonstration marked a turning point. The closure of the BNP HQ in 1995 was its direct consequence.
Community defence in Tower Hamlets
We were also cross-questioned about our stewarding of numerous demonstrations, canvassing sessions, and campaigning activity in Tower Hamlets. We explained the necessity of stewarding. In August 1992, for example, an ANL election campaign stall on Brick Lane was attacked by C18 thugs with iron bars leading to hospitalisations. The reports of the undercover officers, however, as well as being generally wildly inaccurate, saw our stewarding as something organised just by outside left activists rather than by the local community. Our evidence attempted to put the record straight.
I quoted from our material at the time, including a Tower Hamlets Militant Labour leaflet from 1994 which explained:
“‘It is clear that the police will not and cannot defend the Asian community. We all remember the names of the victims of racist attacks: from the murders of Altab Ali in 1978 to Ishmot Ali in 1989; to the attacks on Quddus Ali, Muktar Ahmed, Shaha Miah and now Shah Alam in recent months. But where were the names of their attackers? How many have ever been caught? And even when arrests were made, why are charges often dropped – such as reducing the charge on one of Quddus Ali’s attackers from attempted murder to ‘affray’? Or the decision last week to dismiss the case against BNP leader John Morse for an attack that took place on a black man fifty yards from Bethnal Green police station? And when protests take place it is Bengali youth who end up under arrest!’.
“In that situation we argued that a vital step would be for the council to call ‘a conference of all Tower Hamlets community organisations – youth clubs, trade unions, the Tower Hamlets college students union, Youth Connection, CAG, THARC, the Bengali Workers Action Group, the YRE, CAPA, ANL and so on – with the sole purpose of reaching an agreement on how to organise defence against racist attacks’.”
“We proposed that any stewarding organisation which arose from the conference should be under the democratic control of the local community organisations involved, with council funding to enable public meetings and leaflets to involve as broad a section of the community as possible”.
“We drew a comparison with Sedgefield council – whose MP then was Tony Blair – who had already established a local authority funded ‘community force’. In my view this example, not mentioned once in the police reports, gives a very clear picture of how, for us, stewarding was not a question of a small minority acting against the far right, but part of our campaign to aid the local community and help them to have confidence, in the face of far-right brutality and – at best – police indifference, to successfully oppose the racism they faced”.
The council did not take up our proposal for funding a ‘community force’, but YRE worked together with Youth Connection (a Bengali youth organisation) and others in the community to organise defence against racist attacks.
For example, I explained to the Inquiry, in response to a police description of our lobby of an election count, that “this particular protest was at the count of the Shadwell council by-election, in which the BNP had stood. This was a predominantly Asian area. In the May council elections five months earlier the BNP had sent teams of thirty or forty thugs onto estates in the borough intimidating the local population. Tower Hamlets YRE had therefore helped to instigate a ‘whistle alarm’ system where – in pre-mobile phone days – whistles were used by local young people to warn the community if the BNP came onto the estate. On election night, in addition to the protest at the count, around 200 Bengali youth were out on the streets of their estate, showing their opposition to the BNP. There is no doubt that this campaign helped empower the local population and resulted in the BNP choosing – unlike in May 1994 – not to demonstrate outside the count”.
Brick Lane
The Inquiry tried make much of the day that the BNP’s Brick Lane ‘paper sale’, which took place in a Bengali area and was a longstanding attempt to intimidate the community, was chased away by a protest of more than 800 local people and anti-racist campaigners. They focused on the small number of stewards who got into the BNP police pen by pretending to the police they were far right, and then chased the BNP off, never to return. Despite the attempts by the Met to allege that this was proof of YRE’s violence, of the 23 people that the police report being arrested that day, only one was found guilty of any crime, reflecting that juries agreed that removal of the BNP thugs was necessary. This piece of improvisation by some stewards was entirely secondary, however, to the mobilisation of the local community, which had been discussed and agreed and built for in meetings of hundreds over the previous weeks.
Nor was the BNP’s removal from Brick Lane the end of the campaign. Two weeks later 3,000 young people marched on a Youth Connections demonstration. In 1994, the following year, after another brutal racist attack, YRE organised a school student strike in the borough. Under pressure from below to act, in March 1994 the TUC organised a 40,000-strong march against racism through the streets of Tower Hamlets. The mass campaign of the early 1990s pushed back the BNP for a whole period.
Today, clearly, there is an attempt to whip up racism and anti-migrant feeling, which again needs to be countered by a mass campaign for workers’ unity and against racist division. However, the size and confidence of Britain’s black and Asian communities today is an enormous strength of the potential anti-racist movement. When the far right tried to march in Tower Hamlets this October – their old ‘stomping ground’ – the police had to ban them from entering the borough because of the confidence and determination of the Bengali and other communities to oppose them. This does not mean, however, that the task can only be left to black and Asian workers and youth. The whole movement needs to act. The TUC acting on the resolution passed at their conference and calling a national demonstration against Labour austerity and racist division would be a first step to what is needed.
How the campaign against the BNP in Welling was built
This is an edited extract of the testimony given by Lois Austin to the SpyCops Inquiry:
“The BNP moved into Welling in 1987. These people had supposedly set up a bookshop. It was never a bookshop, it was always a political headquarters, from where they orchestrated their campaign of racism and violence.
As soon as they moved in, the Bexleyheath Labour Party Young Socialists, that I was chair of and my sister was a secretary, called a meeting of everybody we knew in the trade unions. We contacted the Greenwich Action Committee Against Racist Attacks (GACARA), a highly respected anti-racist organisation that was organising to defend the community, and the Greenwich Commission for Racial Equality. We were able to put together a very good coalition: the Greenwich and Bexley Labour Movement Campaign Against Racism and Fascism. We wanted it to be about the working class, and that the trade unions were saying no to the BNP.
Within a few years of the BNP moving in, there had been a 200% increase in racist attacks. For example, in a nearby street there was an Asian family whose children were being abused, graffiti on their walls, bricks through their windows. We worked with others in the coalition to organise a rota of people visiting them, sometimes people stayed overnight, because we wanted the BNP to see that this family had the support of the whole of the community.
We organised, I think, 27 lobbies of Bexley Council. Between 1987 and 1993, we organised a lobby of every full Bexley Council meeting. It was a Tory council. Good Labour Party councillors would put motions on the agenda asking the council to act: to use the Race Relations Act, to use planning legislation, to close the BNP headquarters down. We would present petitions and we would lobby outside. We door-knocked. We put thousands of leaflets through letterboxes explaining to the community what we were doing and why we wanted them to get involved in our campaign. It was about politically raising the understanding and building a big community campaign.
We had Bexley Tory council saying the left need to shut up. But four young black men were murdered. Everyone knows about Stephen Lawrence, it’s right that they do. But there were three other young black men murdered as well: Rolan Adams, Rohit Duggal, Orville Blair. The BNP were going into youth clubs or they were standing outside giving out leaflets, recruiting young people to the BNP and inciting racist hatred and division.
As well as the lobbies of Bexley Council, after every racist murder and every racist attack we organised a demo or protest of some kind. Then Stephen Lawrence was murdered. Murders had happened before, and the authorities hadn’t acted and nothing had been done about it. So we called a demonstration on 8 May 1993…
The second Welling demonstration was a mass demonstration on 16 October 1993. The biggest group on the march was local people. People from Welling, people from Bexley, people from Greenwich. It was important to march where the BNP was active, because we were the community and we were showing to the community that we were the majority. That the BNP were not the majority. That particularly if you were a black or Asian family living in Welling, you did not need to be fearful because we were the majority and we were organised. We wanted to create an environment where people felt safe and that the BNP and their activity was isolated”.
Timeline of major events in Welling and Tower Hamlets
1987: The BNP open a ‘bookshop’ in Welling South East London – in reality their national HQ, a heavily fortified bunker. The local Labour Party Young Socialists branch, led by Militant Labour supporters Lois and Caroline Austin, initiate a broad trade union and community campaign against it.
February 1991: Racist murder of 15-year-old Rolan Adams in Thamesmead, three miles from the BNP HQ.
May 1991: Racist murder of 25-year-old Orville Blair, also in Thamesmead.
July 1992: Racist murder of 15-year-old Rohit Duggal on Well Hall Road, three miles from the BNP HQ.
December 1992: The Tower Hamlets offices of the trade union NALGO (now UNISON) are broken into, fascist graffiti left on walls, and £2,000 damage done.
April 1993: Racist murder of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence on Well Hall Road, three miles from the BNP HQ.
8 May 1993: An 8,000-strong YRE and Panther demonstration marches through Welling past the BNP HQ. Police use horses and riot police to break up the well-stewarded demonstration, seeming to particularly target stewards.
8 September 1993: Racist attack by BNP canvassers in a Tower Hamlets council by-election puts 17-year-old Quddus Ali in a coma. A 1,000-strong protest vigil at the hospital is attacked by the police.
16 September 1993: BNP win the Tower Hamlets Millwall ward by-election on the Isle of Dogs: Derek Beackon, BNP 1,480 (33.8%); Labour 1,473 (33.7%); Liberals 1,284 (29.4%); Tories 134 (3.1%). Turnout: 44%
17 September 1993: 350 council staff walk out of the Tower Hamlets Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood Centre in response to Beackon’s victory.
19 September 1993: The BNP is driven from Brick Lane by an 800-strong turnout of local Asian youth and the YRE.
3 October 1993: 3,000 march in a demonstration organised by Bengali youth, putting aside all ‘territorial’ differences under the banner of Youth Connection, supported by the YRE.
16 October 1993: 50,000 strong Unity demonstration in Welling – co-organised by YRE. On the same day a smaller – around 5,000 strong – demonstration was called by the Anti Racist Alliance in central London.
8 February 1994: After BNP campaigning in Tower Hamlets a racist attack leaves 19-year-old Muktar Ahmed permanently disfigured.
9 March 1994: Tower Hamlets school students strike against racist attacks, organised by the YRE.
19 March 1994: A 40,000-strong TUC demonstration against racism marches through Tower Hamlets.
5 May 1994: Tower Hamlets full council elections. Labour wins a 43 to 7 seat majority, increasing its borough-wide vote by 8,000 (27%), its biggest increase nationally in the 1994 local elections. In Millwall the Labour candidates polled 3,547, 3,447 and 3,446 votes (52% average), Derek Beackon 2,041 votes and the other two BNP candidates 1,775 and 1,713 (28%).
July 1995: BNP HQ is shut down by Bexley Council following a planning inquiry to which YRE gave evidence.